WND EXCLUSIVE

Secret ingredient that could keep America alive

Farah: Political Band-Aids can't save 'mortally wounded' nation

Drew Zahn covers movies for WND as a contributing writer. He cut his journalist teeth as a member of the award-winning staff of Leadership, Christianity Today's professional journal for church leaders. A former pastor, he is the editor of seven books, including Movie-Based Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching, which sparked his ongoing love affair with film and his weekly WND column, "Popcorn and a (world)view."

WND Editor Joseph Farah told a national radio audience late last week that Election 2012 is evidence the U.S. has been “mortally wounded” and it’s time for Americans to stop looking for political “Band-Aid” solutions to the culture’s wider problems.

“It’s very clear, having been through this election now, that things are going to get worse in America before they get better,” Farah told Tim Wildmon and Ed Vitagliano, hosts of American Family Radio’s “Today’s Issues” program.

Farah suggested that many voters were hoping a Mitt Romney presidency would provide a respite from the erosion of constitutional freedoms and economic peril inflicted on America by President Obama, at least long enough for Christians and constitutional conservatives to regroup.

“But now reality has hit us,” Farah said, “that it’s only going to get worse. He’s going to be even more emboldened – and not just Obama, but it’s the entire Democratic political establishment, they are right in line with him, the culture is in line with him.

“What you watch on television and what you see in the movies and what your kids learn in school and what your older children learn in universities – all of this has an impact on the culture,” Farah said. “It’s driving it away from God, driving it away from the foundations of liberty that our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us.”

But Farah also told the hosts not all is doom and gloom.

“Here’s the good news,” Farah said, “God is still on the throne.”

In fact, Farah contended, the key to redeeming America’s current state lies where it always has: in the hands of God and His people.

“So what’s the answer?” Farah asked. “It’s very important that Christians get down on their knees … and take a good look at 2 Chronicles 7:14.”

That biblical passage states the promise from God, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Farah also explained that Christians can no longer allow themselves and their children to capitulate to an increasingly ungodly culture.

“We need to create more institutions like [the American Family Association and WND] that that are educating people properly and are not whoring after false gods, which is essentially what every university in this country is doing, every government school,” Farah said. “We need to start separating ourselves from that, start pulling our kids out of those indoctrination centers we euphemistically call schools and we need to purify ourselves as a body.”

Farah explained, however, that the path to restoring America won’t be quick and easy, especially while the culture is inundated 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, with a media that is “bombarding us with immoral, unprincipled, unconstitutional, ungodly ideals.”

And because the battle is a cultural one, Farah said, politics alone are not the solution.

“We’re not ever going to fix this problem with elections,” Farah said. “You just can’t get involved every two years at election time and expect to change the direction of the country. It’s been drifting this way incrementally for 40 years, and boy, it’s going to take at least another 40 years, if we’re lucky and if we’re blessed by God, to turn it around.”

The radio hosts, in Part 2 of the interview also asked Farah if the Republican Party shouldn’t work more actively to capture the hearts of minority voters, who broke overwhelmingly for Obama in the 2012 election.

Farah, however, again rebuffed the idea that America’s problems are primarily political.

“At best what you are talking about here are Band-Aids on a mortally wounded body, which is America,” Farah said. “There are all kinds of things that the Republican Party might do or should do to try to fix the elections in the future, but none of it is really going to be meaningful.

“They’re going to continue to lose ground until we take over some television networks and some movie studios and more institutions like the AFA are created and more radio programs like yours and we are able to reach out and reason with people and bring them the good news of the gospel,” Farah said. “Ultimately, without that, our nation is going down anyway.

“Many times you read in the Bible where God speaks through a prophet, He talks about ‘this wicked and adulterous generation’ and He sends them into captivity,” Farah explained. “That affected everybody in Israel. … Daniel went into captivity, a great prophet of God, and the thing is, that’s going to happen to us. It’s only a matter of time unless we as believers get down on our knees collectively, individually, and invoke that promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14.”

Farah discussed several other issues and solutions to the troubles America faces in Part 1 of the interview, which can be heard below: